Exile After Exile Fulfills the Warning of Perishing

Another explanation: And you will quickly perish (Deuteronomy 11:17) — exile after exile. And thus do you find with the ten tribes, exile after exile. And thus do you find with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, exile after exile: They were exiled in the seventh [year] of Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth [year], and in the twenty-third [year] (viz. Jeremiah 52:28). Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha says, "[There is a relevant] parable of robbers who enter one's field and cut down his standing grain, and he does not protest. They cut down his sheaves, and he does not protest — until they fill up their tubs and leave. And thus does it say, For there is no weariness to him that is set against her; at the first, he lightly afflicted the land of Zevulun, and the land of Naftali, and afterward he afflicted her more grievously (Isaiah 8:23)." Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai says, "Now if those of whom it stated, quickly, were not exiled quickly but rather only after [the passage of much] time, how much more so with those of whom, quickly, was not written, etc."